10 Software-Defined Networking Architectures

Software-defined networking is a hot topic for debate in the industry. Experts argue about the best way to implement it, the ways it might affect network engineers and administrators, and how it might disrupt the traditional power structure in the networking industry. While there are a lot of opinions about this emerging technology, there's one inescapable fact: SDN has brought new attention and innovation to the network.
To get a view into the various approaches to SDN, we asked 10 vendors to

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Juniper Networks Contrail

Juniper Networks Contrail is a virtual overlay system for network virtualization and intelligence. Through RESTful APIs, Contrail works with CloudStack and OpenStack architectures to orchestrate the provisioning of compute, storage and network resources. Contrail's SDN controller virtualizes the network to enable automation and orchestration of hybrid cloud environments, elastic service chaining of network and security services, and a "big data for infrastructure" (BDI) analytics engine providing a real-time view of the entire network. Contrail is an open standards-based IP system that natively enables NaaS across heterogeneous and federated cloud networks.

Respondents are on a roll: 53% brought their private clouds from concept to production in less than one year, and 60% ­extend their clouds across multiple datacenters. But expertise is scarce, with 51% saying acquiring skilled employees is a roadblock.